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New speaker design...


Ynot

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Was talking last night to a couple of our guys at the theatre about an article I saw last year about a new type of speaker cab, specifically being developed for the outdoor festival market. There was an article somewhere in L & S I, or Stage Directions or one of the online trade publications I get in my inbox, but I'm damned if I can find it.

 

As I recall, it looked at the problem with many outdoor festivals being the 'overspill' into the neighbouring areas. Not a problem with events in the middle of a farmer's field out in the sticks, but things like 'Party in the Park' in the centre of london I can understand how there may be many potential complainants with band noise getting out of the arena of intended audience.

 

So the solution under development was a super-directional speaker array which sort of 'funnelled' the sound towards the audience in the arena/park/field, and these could be angled such that the levels tailed off towards the end of the measured space, and also there was little or no sound escaping to the sides - that way the only people in the range of the heightened volumes that festivals and outdoor gigs produce are those who are paying for the privilege of being deafened! :)

 

It's still a work in progress, or it was early last year when I read the article, but the discussion last night was based on whether this has as yet seen the light of day in the real gig world - I can't find reference to the project anywhere at the moment - anyone got any experience of this new development, direct or indirect? I'm not a noise boy as a rule, and can't see me ever likely to be using these myself but curoius minds are wondering...

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Ynot,

 

I suspect that this is simply an adaptation of wavefield synthesis. If you start with the Kirchoff-Helmholtz integral:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/6/d/d/6dd65a40fdec1f4e9bf0618f3bda226d.png

 

 

 

 

but use the non linear effect of high SWL ultrasound, one can achieve the effect you've described. For concert style deployment, you would need around 100 of these piezo boxes per side:

 

http://www.altai.co.uk/images/pictures_sm/P_jpegs/P115CPB.jpg

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Could you be talking about the Martin MLA? It's like a line array, but meant to be better. Uses a lot of DSP trickery to tightly control the dispersion...

 

This popped into my head on reading this, be interesting to hear the results.

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